The opening match of the T20 World Cup between South Africa and Sri Lanka was held at Nassau Stadium in New York with far from ideal pitch conditions. The two captains shared their displeasure with the pitch.
Sri Lanka’s batting performance was disastrous as they were bundled out for a paltry 77, their lowest in T20 cricket to date. It was not an easy target for South Africa, yet they had to try hard before finally achieving it with six wickets and 3.4 overs remaining.
The importance of providing good playing conditions for such a high profile tournament is highlighted by criticisms from both captains. From what players can infer from this, Nassau stadium has been unable to deliver on its promises to the cricketers.
“Batting was a bit up and down … an extremely difficult wicket and still we managed somehow score runs: it’s tough one from a batting point of view,” said Aiden Markram after the game
“So you try to take the wicket out of it but when the ball misbehaves or there is low bounce then it is just one of those things, hopefully we can take something out of that,” added Hasmukh Patel who scored 12 runs.
Playing on this pitch will give our team some advantage in our next games revealed South African skipper.
“Our next two games are obviously here so…we know what to expect. Just have to keep assessing as we move around.”
Hasaranga also commented that the pitch did not favor big scoring matches.
“Our batters were looking at 160-170 I think. With our bowlers especially this is a 120 wicket,
“We went in with bowling strength which is why we batted first…and put up a good score; early in the tournament as a team we didn’t bat well … We’ve got some strong bowling options though so if our batters do well then we could go further”, he added.
